The following discussion of the background to the invention is intended to facilitate an understanding of the present invention only. It should be appreciated that the discussion is not an acknowledgement or admission that any of the material referred to was published, known or part of the common general knowledge of the person skilled in the art in any jurisdiction as at the priority date of the invention.
Users of prepaid internet connection services (e.g. prepaid broadband services) typically have a fixed budget on accessing Internet content. Such prepaid broadband services are generally provided by a telecommunications carrier and are in the range of 2 to 5 Mbps.
An illustrative example of a prepaid broadband service may be packaged as the following to a subscriber and includes one or more of the following:
a Plug 'n Play installer and launcher; a prepaid account number display; Load Balance Counter (for counting how much prepaid credit is used or has lapsed); Call & SMS Capability (at extra charges); and free texts services.
The current charging/billing model of a broadband service may be based on a fixed number of surfing hours (example 120 hours valid for 5 days); or pay per use at 10 peso for every 30 mins.
A main drawback for users using prepaid broadband service is the race against time to access and download Internet content due to budget and time constraints. These constraints often meant that users' experience is compromised as there is not enough time to explore interested websites or Internet content. In addition, these time-based charging models as described above (colloquially known as pay-per-specific-time model) may be unfairly biased against people staying in relatively low network connectivity areas (e.g. villages, suburbs) as the internet connection speeds, example ‘3G’ speeds experienced in relatively low network connectivity areas are far less than the specified actual 3G speeds.
The present invention seeks to provide a system and method that alleviates the above mentioned drawbacks at least in part.